Will a New Partner Fix Everything?

Major corporations know a secret that you should know in your relationship. Like all good secrets, the corporate secret was learned the hard way. Basically, to learn the lesson somebody had to really mess things up.

On April 23, 1985, the Coca-Cola company introduced a product that was simply called “New Coke.” It was a complete reformulation of the classic Coca-Cola that had been around for just short of 100 years at that point. Coke was losing market share to Pepsi and the company believed that changing its formula would bring in new customers. Unfortunately, what they accomplished was to alienate the customers that they already had. They lost loyal customers in an attempt to make a product that was pretty much like every other cola on the market. New Coke failed and the company paid the price. Stock prices plummeted and New Coke went down in history as one of the greatest marketing failure of all time. What Coca-Cola learned was that it’s better to spend your efforts on taking care of the customers you have - instead of trying to change and attract new customers. And THAT is a huge relationship secret.

You see, it’s much better to save the relationship you already have than to try and find something better out there in the world. The relationship you already have is with someone who - at least at one time - was pretty darn amazing. You ended up with them and things were good for a while. In the long run, it takes far less to reconnect with your existing partner than it does to try and build a respectful, long-term connection with someone else. Sure, you can find the fresh, fuzzy feeling of new love with someone else, but that relationship will struggle too over time, just like all relationships. You don’t want to end up on a constant merry-go-round of relationship after relationship after relationship. It’s just exhausting and if there are marriages, mortgages, and children involved, it’s downright expensive. A divorce - at a minimum - will cost about $30,000, and that’s not including moving expenses, buying new furniture, renting a place. When it’s all said and done, a couple could be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in a divorce. As Coca-Cola found out, sometimes it’s better to keep what you’ve got.

If your relationship is struggling, the best investment you can make is repairing it. After all, it might just be the relationship you always wanted in the first place.